Critical Essay | Critical Review by Nancy Pate

Critical Review by Nancy Pate

SOURCE: "Murder Unveils an Island's Secrets," in Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1995, p. 4.

[In the review below, Pate remarks favorably on Snow Falling on Cedars.]

It is December of 1954, and in the crowded courthouse on the Puget Sound island of San Piedro, a man is on trial for murder. Outside, a winter storm is brewing, the wind from the sea driving the snowflakes inland. Soon, the snow quietly blankets the island—much like the silent prejudice that shrouds its "five thousand damp souls."

The man accused of murdering salmon fisherman Carl Heine is another fisherman, Kabuo Miyomoto. He and Carl went to school together, but then Kabuo, like the 843 people of Japanese descent who lived on San Piedro in March of 1942, was exiled to the Manzanar internment camp. There he married a fellow islander, Hatsue, before joining the U.S. Army and fighting in Europe. After the war,...
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